Sen. Mark Udall has made women’s issues the cornerstone of his campaign, and on Tuesday several conservative anti-abortion groups are joining in, asking the Democrat in a tough re-election bid to support a bill limiting late-term abortions.

Former Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, now vice president of government affairs for the Susan B. Anthony List, will speak at a rally Tuesday at the state Capitol urging Sen. Mark Udall to support limiting late-term abortions (Lynn Bartels, The Denver Post)

A news conference scheduled for 1 p.m. noon at state Capitol is part of a multi-state “Summer of Life” campaign to bring awareness to the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would limit abortions after five months with some exceptions.

The measure passed the Republican-controlled House more than a year ago but, according to rally organizers, it has been stonewalled by the Democratic majority in the Senate. Udall has said he believes abortion decisions should be made by women.

Events are scheduled in swing states where Democrats face strong Republican challengers. Congressman Cory Gardner is trying to unseat Gardner.

Today’s speakers include former Congressman Marilyn Musgrave of Fort Morgan, vice president of government affairs for the Susan B. Anthony list, which works to elect pro-life candidates. Also speaking is Michael Norton, former Colorado U.S. attorney and husband of 2010 Senate candidate Jane Norton, with the Alliance Defending Freedom.

Musgave in an interview last month at the Western Conservative Summit said Colorado’s Senate race is competitive for a pro-life candidate.

“I hope that Cory Gardner will fight back on this phony war against women. The very first ad that Mark Udall did was attacking Cory Gardner on that issue,” Musgrave said. “I think it’s very incumbent for the swing voters in Colorado to know where Mark Udall stands on the life issue. Mark Udall would place no restrictions on abortion whatsoever, late-term abortions, sex-selection abortions.

“So who’s really extreme on this issue?”

Udall’s campaign believes Gardner is wrong on women’s issues.

“It’s no surprise that the biggest defenders of Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, who both made national headlines for their crass and demeaning comments on rape, are parachuting into Colorado to help Congressman Gardner, who wrote a bill to make abortion a felony in cases of rape,” said Udall’s campaign spokeswoman, Kristin Lynch.

“Coloradans won’t be swayed by radical groups like the Susan B. Anthony List. Voters know that Mark respects women and trusts them to make the best decisions for themselves and their families.”

“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” Akin said.

“I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen,” Mourdock said.

The group sponsoring the rally is Students for Life, which makes no mention of Gardner on its website. Gardner voted for the bill limiting late-term abortions.

Democrats have had successes in recent years by accusing Republicans of waging a war on women, but the GOP is fighting back now, accusing their opponents of focusing on that issue at the expense of others, such as energy and the economy.

In a Quinnipiac University poll of Colorado voters in July, when offered four choices on abortion: 29 percent of Colorado voters say abortion should be legal in all cases; 35 percent say it should be legal in most cases; 22 percent say it should be illegal in most cases; and 10 percent say it should be illegal in all cases.

Other speakers at today’s rally are: Kristan Hawkins, Students for Life of America; Debra Chaves, Colorado Family Action; Lynn Grandon, Archdiocese of Denver; and Sarah Zagorski, Colorado Citizens for Life.

Colorado Citizens for Life executive director Sara Zagorski will also be speaking at the event. We have endorsed Cory Gardner for Senate.

His record is a stark contrast to Mark Udall, who has voted almost 80
times in support of abortion or abortion funding and who has repeatedly voted against
banning partial-birth abortions.

RobertChase

Will Sen. Udall publicly thank you for your endorsement?

Sumzero

Most people are against late term abortions. Only the far-left kookoos support it.

gstewart54

How about infanticide, regularly practiced by island cultures, but only by far-left kookoo island cultures?

Sumzero

So is cannibalism. You want to have that here too?

good grief.

blockmccloud

100% false. Most people are for late term abortion and only the far right kookoos oppose it.

blockmccloud

Udall stands with the overwhelming majority of CO women who support abortion rights.

RobertChase

Will Sen. Udall publicly thank you for your endorsement?

P.S. Moronic censors at the DP: here is my unobjectionable comment again — feel free to remove it again.

Sumzero

Udall would never restrict abortion to the early terms. He and the extremists on the left are close to pushing afterbirth abortions. They want people to have the “right” to abort their 1 year old child if they have some sort of birth defect, or for any other reason.

Coloradan_by_Choice

Based on that premise, perhaps it’s not too late to consider aborting Udall. It’s obvious there’s no worthwhile intelligent life in that fetus. Isn’t that all the excuse necessary to satisfy the left?

blockmccloud

When will the radical far right stop trying to take rights away from women?

Sumzero

When will the radical left stop murdering children for their own jollies?

blockmccloud

Abortion is a legal right supported by majority of Americans. When will the radical right stop thinking it’s ok to strip rights away from women?

Sumzero

So was slavery at one time. Are you suggesting that slaveholders were being stripped of rights in 1865?

Jerry Dryer

Just think slavery is gone and about living men and women.
Abortion is not. Try to read up on it. Do not listen to radio or TV or some nut in church.

IndyThought

You need to read up on the fact that a fetus is a living human being.
These little people undergo surgery while still resident in the womb. Doctors don’t operate on dead people.

IndyThought

There is no inherent right to kill.
More nonsense.

lissmth

Fully one-half of those babies Udall likes to kill are baby women. Has he ever seen a five-month fetus?

Jerry Dryer

Women abort about 15-20% of all fertilize eggs. Most never know because the egg doesn’t stick to the wall and if they do stick they are flushed out in a period.

Now doesn’t that make God if the biggest abortionist of all?

Jerry Dryer

Sorry my numbers are off. If you would read this it has the right numbers.

“However, there’s some serious problems with the logic of ensoulation at the point of conception — unless your God
is a real asshole. The CDC as well as the March of Dimes and several
fertility experts have conducted studies to see exactly how hard it is
to carry a pregnancy to term. In general, less than 70% of all
fertilized eggs will even implant into the mother’s womb causing
pregnancy to continue. From there, there is a 25-50% chance of aborting
before you even know you are pregnant. If, however, you make it to your
first month, your odds go up to 75% chance of carrying to term.”

God not only endorses abortion he gave a recipe for abortion in the bible. Get over yourselves radical righties, you have no right to control another person’s body.

http://batman-news.com less free

Since when do you believe in god? So sad that not killing babies is considered extreme.

Sal M O’nella

I am agnostic, I neither believe that god exist or does not exist. Just using the religious arguments against those who like to use them to justify their hate toward women. And the correct terms would be either embryo or fetus, depending on the stage of development. It becomes a child when it is born, takes it’s first breath. Do you call your sperm babies?

http://batman-news.com less free

Whatever keeps the guilt away… Who is saying they hate women? Nobody. Hating when they kill babies for sure. A lot of liberals might call it lunch.

Sal M O’nella

I see you are still refusing to see science as science. So how many babies did you kill last night when you were watching that porn?

Whatever keeps the guilt away… Who is saying they hate women? Nobody. Hating when they kill babies for sure. A lot of liberals might call it lunch.

IndyThought

A sperm is not a human being. An unfertilized egg is not a human being.
An embryo and a fetus is a living human being.
Biology 101.

Sumzero

Talk about the anti-science crowd. Geez….

fthechildren

Yes, we see that with every bastard born of another pathetic human being. And now they are everywhere. You call them our future, I call them our problem!

Sumzero

But isn’t the mother controlling someone else’s body when she murders the child? Duh….

blockmccloud

No, she’s controlling her own body. Women don’t want older white men telling them what they can or can’t do with their own bodies.

Sumzero

Her own body that has another separate, individual body within it.

IndyThought

No, she is ending the life of a distinct human being.
When planned that amounts to pre-meditated murder.

RobertChase

So there’s no need to amend the laws; according to you, a planned abortion could be prosecuted as first-degree murder. All you need to do is persuade prosecutors of the validity of your position, and away you go!

IndyThought

What gives anyone a right to control the body of a yet-to-be-born human being and kill it?

pabloat8000

Calling elective late-term abortions part of a War on Women is odd; isn’t it actually a War on Babies?

Jerry Dryer

So abortion has been around scene 3000-2500 BC and not one word saying it’s wrong in the Bible. How many women where stoned to death back then that were pregnant?
This is just BS made up to control women.
The right jumps up and down about abortion but as soon as it is born they just as soon let it die from lack of food or medical care.

Abortion is up to a women and her God. No one else.

http://batman-news.com less free

Blah blah blah, the bible, blah blah blah control women, blah blah blah Can the same be said for every other type of murder?

Jerry Dryer

Murder of what? A zygote?

Sumzero

Man, did you even take basic biology?

Jerry Dryer

I did you should look things up before you look foolish.
“After a female egg is fertilized, the resulting one-celled organism
becomes known as a zygote. Once this has occured, the zygote begins a
two-week period of rapid cell division and will eventually become an
embryo. The zygote divides through a process known as mitosis, in which
each cell doubles by dividing into two cells. This two-week stage is
known as the germinal period of development and covers the time of conception to the implantation of the embryo in the uterus.http://psychology.about.com/od/zindex/g/def_zygote.htm

IndyThought

The zygote stage lasts less than a day. After that the embryo stage yields a fetus, a living human being.
Why are you trying so hard to de-humanize life?

RobertChase

“a fetus, a living human being” — ridiculous! You may not have picked up on it, but the Right’s determined effort to substitute “unborn baby” for “fetus” failed some considerable time ago.

IndyThought

You are confused and conflating a legal definition with a biological fact.
Stop the propaganda.

IndyThought

Again you confuse and conflate a legal definition with a medical fact.
You just don’t get it.

Sumzero

So he can sleep at night knowing he condones murdering innocent children.

IndyThought

A very very small percentage of the abortions done in the US.
Dr. Gosnell would not have walked a zygote to the bus stop.

IndyThought

The Grand Conspiracy.
If abortion did not kill human beings, you might’ve had a point.

Diane Madison

It never ceases to amaze me how the Republican party can thump the bible when it comes to abortion yet cut funding for children that are already here! So…if you are going to tell a woman she must give birth then it would seem to me Republicans should also be ready to “pony up” and help raise the children they insist be born. After all it takes a village…….

fthechildren

Ummmm, once again your limited liberal mind is failing you. Rs are pro life. We are not pro bastard! Understand?

IndyThought

Funding for children? I thought the parents are supposed to fund their children?

fthechildren

Lynn — please go on a diet! Ew…

garmet

The democrats seem to be confused and having a double standard problem. Hickenlooper, wants to give clemency to a murderer, Dunlap, because he doesn’t believe in the death penalty, yet many liberal/left democrats believe it’s okay to assign the death penalty via aborting infants.

Ben Cook

The same is true for republicans, they don’t want to kill a zygote but they have no problems at killing fully formed human beings and they just love their guns

Sumzero

Absolutely stupid post.

IndyThought

That in a nutshell is the hypocrisy of the left.

theregoi

I suppose if I was a pregnant woman and found out, late term, that my baby had SERIOUS birth defects that would cause a painful, brief and expensive existence for the poor little baby, I’d consider a late term abortion.

Extremist Marilyn Musgrave wants to take the option of that personal decision away from women and their families. Is Marilyn going to step up and pay for the expensive medical treatment to try to keep a baby alive–a baby that had no chance anyway?

Jerry Dryer

Simple, NO. Once born she just doesn’t care anymore.

IndyThought

Wrong. Musgrave and other pro-life supporters care about human beings at all stages of their life, wanting them to succeed and be an contributor to our society.
Your accusation is an empty unproven slur on her.

theregoi

Do you understand that some babies are born with such deformities that they will not live beyond a few years, and all that time they’ll be hooked up to machines, needing surgeries and expensive medications? Meanwhile the parents are heartsick and probably financially drained while enduring seeing their baby suffer through this, only to inevitably die.

And you want them to have a chance to succeed and contribute to society?? Why don’t you think a little about if that makes any sense and then get back to me.

IndyThought

You are making an argument for eugenics.
Many people consider the practice abhorrent an unethical.

IndyThought

You are advocating eugenics in a politically-correct form.

Ben Cook

Why should real Democrats ever cave into republican demands, it’s not like the republicans are ever going to vote for a Democrat anyway.

a420bowlkilla

Colorado is about one-third Independent/Not Affiliated.

RobertChase

Unaffiliated voters are a larger group (36% of all registered voters as of Aug. 1) than both the Fascist (Republican) Party (32%) and the Collaborationist (Democratic) Party (31%). All minor parties combined account for barely more than 1% of voters.

IndyThought

This would be an eminently reasonable position to take, but Udall has to answer to his far left constituency and claim he supports abortion on demand – for any reason, at any time.
He will continue to prove that he does not wish to protect the weakest among us.

Lynn Bartels thinks politics is like sports but without the big salaries and protective cups. The Washington Post's "The Fix" blog has named her one of Colorado's best political reporters and tweeters.

Joey Bunch has been a reporter for 28 years, including the last 12 at The Denver Post. For various newspapers he has covered the environment, water issues, politics, civil rights, sports and the casino industry.